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Wake-up call for college students


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#1 stocks

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Posted 04 September 2010 - 10:01 PM

I’m sorry to bring you bad news, but your generation faces the toughest competition any American generation has ever known.

Your competition is in China and India – and your competition isn’t hanging out at frat parties or sitting around watching sitcoms with dorm-mates. It isn’t getting stoned and it isn’t putting its energy into chasing the opposite sex. Your competition isn’t taking lots of courses on gender studies; it isn’t majoring in ethnic studies, or the history of film.


the upper middle class benefited over the last generation from a rising difference between the living standards of professional and blue collar American workers. This is likely to change; from civil service jobs in government to university professors, lawyers, health care personnel, middle and upper middle management in the private sector, the upper-middle class is going to face a much harsher environment going forward. Automation, outsourcing and unremitting pressures to control costs are going to squeeze upper middle class incomes. What blue collar workers faced in the last thirty years is coming to the white collar workforce now.

Yet as their financial prospects darken, students’ educational costs are exploding. Like the health care system, the educational system is being overwhelmed by rising costs and rising demand. And as misguided government policies contributed to the real estate bubble by artificially inflating demand, government programs are burdening students with unpayable loans and contributing to relentless and unsustainable inflation in school costs.

And so, dear students, welcome back! Your generation is going to have dig its own way out of the hole my generation has dug for you (thanks for the Medicare, kids, and sorry about the deficit!)


http://blogs.the-ame...back-to-school/
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
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#2 stocks

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Posted 04 September 2010 - 10:15 PM

Irate law school grads say they were misled about job prospects

The angry rants first surfaced last summer on an anonymous New Jersey blog.
Law school is a “scam,” the blogger wrote. Administrators are greedy “charlatans” who could not care less about education, and students are but “hapless lemmings” who have been tricked into paying a fortune to enter “America’s most overrated, miserable and saturated industry.”

The blogger is Scott Bullock, a 2005 Seton Hall University School of Law graduate who agreed to reveal his identity to The Star-Ledger for this article. Yet Bullock, whose outrage stems from graduating with more than $100,000 of debt but meager job prospects, says he is merely tapping into a groundswell of resentment against the nation’s law schools.


http://www.nj.com/bu...ds_say_the.html
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#3 stocks

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Posted 06 September 2010 - 09:34 AM

The Higher Education Bubble: Ready to Burst?

University of California scholars Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks report that students these days study an average of 14 hours a week, down from 24 hours in 1961.

The American Council of Alumni and Trustees concluded, after a survey of 714 colleges and universities, "by and large, higher education has abandoned a coherent content-rich general education curriculum."

They aren't taught the basics of literature, history or science. ACTA reports that most schools don't require a foreign language, hardly any require economics, American history and government "are badly neglected," and schools "have much to do" on math and science.

ACTA's whatwilltheylearn.com Website provides the grisly details for each school, together with the amount of tuition. Students and parents can see if they will get their money's worth.


People are beginning to note that administrative bloat, so common in government, seems especially egregious in colleges and universities. Somehow previous generations got by and even prospered without these legions of counselors, liaison officers and facilitators. Perhaps we can do so again.

http://www.realclear...rst_107029.html
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#4 stocks

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 08:39 AM

College tuition too high? Tune in, drop out, and learn!

College tuition at Ivy League schools has gone up 14 times household income in the past 40 years. Here's an alternative.


Outside of government itself, America’s universities probably shelter more zombies than any other industry. Of course, there are the millions of students who spend some of the best years of their lives doing little or nothing useful – study loads have dropped from an average of 24 hours a week in the ’60s to just 14 hours now. The professors, administrators and hangers-on are even more zombified. The students eventually have to leave this sanctuary and go out into the real world – or the government. The employees stay zombified for life.

Harvard increased its administrative staff by 300% since 1993. And the typical professor at an Ivy League university now takes a sabbatical every three years, rather than every 7 as the word implies. And according to The Economist, 20 of Harvard’s 48 history professors are on leave this year.

Come to think of it, we don’t know why they bother to teach history at a university. Anyone can read it on his own. And if you want to know what the professor thinks, just buy his book. You can get it for…what, $29?

Take this Daily Reckoning challenge: drop out of college. Set up a reading and discussion group… Spend four hours a day, two hours reading…one hour writing a critique/opinion on what you have read…and one hour challenging each others’ thoughts. Do that for 4 years at negligible cost…or spend $160,000 and 4 years fulltime at Harvard.


http://www.csmonitor...p-out-and-learn
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#5 stocks

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Posted 14 September 2010 - 11:00 AM

How Student Debt Wrecks Marriages, Inhibits Family Formation, and Delays the Housing Recovery

Nobody likes unpleasant surprises, but when Allison Brooke Eastman’s fiancé found out four months ago just how high her student loan debt was, he had a particularly strong reaction: he broke off the engagement within three days.

Ms. Eastman said she had told him early on in their relationship that she had over $100,000 of debt. But as the couple got closer to their wedding day, she took out all the paperwork and it became clear that her total debt was actually about $170,000. “He accused me of lying,” said Ms. Eastman, 31, a San Francisco X-ray technician and part-time photographer who had run up much of the balance studying for a bachelor’s degree in photography. “But if I was lying, I was lying to myself, not to him. I didn’t really want to know the full amount.”

Ms. Tidwell feels no guilt about the $250,000 in debt she will probably run up, including some from a master’s degree program she completed in London, where she and Mr. Kogler met. “I didn’t acquire it because I go out and shop a lot,” she said. “It’s because I’m doing something that I’ll love for the rest of my life.”

Still, if she and Mr. Kogler are going to move in together and get engaged, she wants their financial arrangements to be clear and fair. But how do you define fair when you’re bringing a quarter of a million dollars in debt to a relationship?


http://globaleconomi...-marriages.html
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UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#6 OEXCHAOS

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Posted 14 September 2010 - 06:07 PM

Ouch!!

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#7 Rogerdodger

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Posted 14 September 2010 - 11:36 PM

A friend's daughter went to law school.
Passed the New York bar on her first try.
HATES being a lawyer.
She's taking more classes to teach disabled kids.
She has HUGE DEBT and BROKE PARENTS.
Working your way through college and paying for it actually makes kids value their class time and work harder than when it's given to them.
IMHO

Free College Loans?
College certainly is expensive. Zac Bissonette, author of the book “ Debt-Free U” explains how you can save money on college tuition. “The advice is fundamental and makes a lot of sense,” laughed Sean, “My parents were begging me to go to school but I knew they didn’t have the money.” Bissonette explained, “I wanted to create a formula that relies on hard work to avoid loans.” The average public school is $15,000 a year but there are tons of ways you can get that cost down. This is a must read book for any student entering school or any parent who’s sending a child to school. With a bit of elbow grease, paying for college doesn’t have to be so scary. Check out Zac’s book on Amazon.com!

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Edited by Rogerdodger, 14 September 2010 - 11:41 PM.


#8 stocks

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Posted 21 September 2010 - 07:09 PM

Strolling the grounds at Versailles

... a pleasant stroll across the Ivy League campus of Brown University, in Providence, R.I. I saw the gardening crews, the maintenance trucks, the pricey restoration work on Faunce Arch. I passed the skating rink, the president's mansion and the new Department of Facilities Management building.

As I surveyed the handsome spread (tax-exempt, sadly), I wondered, "Is all this really necessary -- I mean -- for the education of these students?"

American universities now rake in $40 billion a year more than they did 30 years ago. And most of that money isn't going for academics, according to Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus in their book, "Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids and What We Can Do About It."

For starters, the money is going to more numerous and more pampered sports teams. Duke University in Durham, N.C., spends over $20,000 a year per varsity golf player. And these squads rarely pay for themselves. There are 629 college football teams, and only 14 make money.

The number of administrators per student at colleges has about doubled over 30 years, according to Hacker and Dreifus. Their titles point to such questionable duties as "director for learning communities" and "assistant dean of students for substance education."

Compensation for college presidents, meanwhile, has soared to corporate CEO levels. Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., pays its president $1.2 million a year!

Universities are also competing to make their on-campus experiences more like a resort than a bookish monastery. Some dorms feature granite counters, kitchens and walk-in closets. Fancy health clubs have replaced musty gyms.


http://www.realclear...ege_107241.html
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#9 stocks

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Posted 28 September 2010 - 10:07 AM

The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History - and How We Can Fight Back

Warning to parents: NEVER cosign on a student loan.
Many parents are facing financial ruin because they cosigned on a student loan for a child. This 150 page book examines the huge student loan industry and how it derives colossal profits by destroying peoples' lives.

Chapter 1 - "The Rise of Sallie Mae and the Fall of Consumer Protections" -How Sallie Mae became a vertical corporation with control of all aspects of student loans: issuing loans, guarantees, and collections. In 2002 it purchased Pioneer Credit Recovery, a student loan collection company. It lobbied Congress for laws that permitted huge penalties and fees for defaulted debt.

Chapter 2 - "Who Benefited" - The huge salaries of Albert Lord, CEO of Sallie Mae, and other executives in the industry. Reveals that Edfund, a "guarantor"--is just another entity that relentlessly extracts money from debtors.

Chapter 3 - "Collection Abuses" and Chapter 4 "The Borrowers" - Readers may have already heard some of these stories from[...]. One particularly sad story is a graduate of Illinois State University who committed suicide after completing his master's in chemistry because his student loans had grown to $100,000. Many student debtors report being called several times every day by Sallie Mae loan shark collectors.

Chapter 5 - "The Oversight Fiasco" and Chapter 6 "Corruption of the Universities" - The most shocking part of the book. Describes how numerous personnel of the Dept. of Education are actually former Sallie Mae officers, and instances where university financial aid officials hold stock in student loan companies such as Student Loan Xpress. Also describes kickbacks, donations, luncheons, and gifts paid by student lenders to universities in return for steering their incoming freshmen to those lenders (such as putting them on "preferred lender lists"). These universities include the University of Nebraska, Johns Hopkins, the University of Texas at Austin, and many others. For example, one financial aid director of Johns Hopkins received $93,000 from American Express and Student Loan Xpress. On many occasions, students who called their universities' student loan hotlines didn't know they were really talking to representatives of student loan companies.



http://www.amazon.co...y/dp/0807042293
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#10 stocks

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Posted 01 November 2010 - 10:27 AM

Last year, there was record unemployment of 8.7 percent for college graduates ages 20 to 24, according to a new report from the Project on Student Debt.

Let’s see, there was the tech bubble in the mid- to late-1990s that eventually busted a lot of people financially. We’re suffering right now because the housing bubble burst. And what’s the next bubble?

Let’s call it College at Any Cost. Bubbles happen when assets — stocks, for example — have inflated values. The bubble will bust when there is a great discrepancy between the inflated price of the asset and its real worth.

Don’t we have that right now with the thousands of college graduates who have paid heavily for their educations with debt and now can’t find jobs that pay enough to service the debt without stretching the loans out for decades?

Last year, there was record unemployment of 8.7 percent for college graduates ages 20 to 24, according to a new report from the Project on Student Debt. Students who graduated in 2009 carried an average of $24,000 in student loan debt, up 6 percent from the year before.


http://www.boston.co...k.net#headTools
-- -
Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.